‘“Of what avail are beauty and bravery and worth, against possession? And if she have taken the dullest of all insects to her heart, we have but lost our time in suing her, and the nightingale, on the cold earth yonder, hath given his life in vain.” ‘There is a moral in my fable, ladies!’ added Riccio, with a smile and a shrug of his crooked shoulders--‘a moral that you will all of you acknowledge if you tell truth.--Who shall dictate to a woman’s fancy, or reduce to rule the wandering inclinations of a woman’s heart?’ The ladies laughed and whispered, some protesting against the conclusion, others pitying the poor nightingale, but all uniting in condemnation of the useless drone. Lord Ruthven, who had been eyeing the narrator with looks of fierce scorn, strode up to where he was sitting at the Queen’s feet, and asked him, in a loud, contemptuous voice,-- ‘Were there no WASPS in yonder garden of which you spake, Master Tale-teller,--wasps that might give the drone a lesson, and teach him his place was somewhat lower than the bosom of its choicest flower?’ The Italian looked up somewhat scared in his grim questioner’s face. ‘Nay, signior,’ he replied humbly, ‘in courtly gardens the wasps must leave their stings behind.’ ‘Aye! sticking in the carcase of the drone!’ returned Ruthven, with a brutal laugh, which was echoed by Morton, and one or two other savage-looking noblemen who stood near. The Queen seemed highly displeased, but, true to her conciliatory principle, hastened to change the subject ere these turbulent spirits should further forget their own dignity and the respect due to her presence. Calling her maidens around her, she bade them bring her harp, a beautiful instrument, highly ornamented, and proposed it should be the prize of any lady in the company who could sing to it an impromptu measure on a subject she would herself propose. ‘I shall play on it no more,’ said Mary, with a half-melancholy smile. ‘It is only maiden-queens who have time for such follies. A busier day, for aught I know, may be about to dawn, ere long, on Mary Stuart’ (here she cast a sly glance at Randolph, who, without seeming to heed her, was listening, all attention), ‘and I cannot leave my favourite instrument in better hands than hers who wins it fairly by her skill. Behold! which of you, ladies, will undertake to strike these strings and improvise a song, as deftly as our little secretary here has told us a story?’ It was an attempt requiring considerable confidence in such a presence. The ladies gazed on one another in obvious hesitation. Presently a handsome, intellectual-looking woman stepped forward, and curtseying to Her Majesty, bent gracefully, without speaking, over the instrument. ‘Beatrix Gardyn!’ exclaimed the Queen, with a bright smile, ‘the Sappho of the North! I know of none better qualified to do justice to my poor harp; will you begin, Beatrix, at once? Are you waiting for inspiration?’